“How to pass and receive associative arrays with ODP.NET” - that question is sure to have to annoyed a lot of programmers. We have really pulled our hair over this problem and when you search for it on the net there is not very much helpful to be found.

We are using a feature of the ODP.NET that allows you to send arrays of parameters to and from stored procedures in Oracle. This is called associative arrays and is described in great detail in this article.

BUT… of course there is a but. This article doesn’t describe how to receive arrays back from a stored procedure. This is described here.

The trick (and confusing part) is that the size of the output array needs to be specified a priori (on beforehand) even for output parameters. A bit strange but it works.

Since I took a way too long nap together with Abbe earlier this evening, I am now paying the price and can’t sleep. This happens about once every fifth year or so, so why not take the opportunity to do something useful.

So now that I’ve done that (a PowerPoint presentation for work that never seems to top my priority and sending emails surrounding Christmas(!) concerts), I thought I’d upload some new pictures of Abbe.

Good night reader… wherever you are.

The last time I wrote about this I was a bit too fast to get all the intricate details down. One of those details blew up in my face today.

The main reason for why it took me the better part of the afternoon to sort out had to do with some really confusing name-setting. Here is was confused me;

• the namespace System.Data.Oracle Microsoft has provided a implementation of a Oracle client provider. Keyword: Microsoft -this implementation doesn’t contain all the functionality in Oracle databases.
• cause of that Oracle has given us the Oracle.DataAccess.Client or ODP.NET for short. In this you’ll have all the things you’ll need.

Both of these inherits from the generic DbCommand (and uses the same name for almost everything) and can hence be converted into DbCommand but not into each other (of course - but this took me about 1,5...

We have encountered a problem when renaming and restructuring Visual Studio projects. (There are numerous problems with that but here is one that really cause us to ponder for a while.) We create a standard Class Library project and moved some unit test files into it. Of course we should have create a test project instead but now we didn’t - ok…

The problem was that the unit tests didn’t show up in the test view. The solution was to add the following line into the project file (ripped from a working test project) <projecttypeguids>{3AC096D0-A1C2-E12C-1390-A8335801FDAB};{F184B08F-C81C-45F6-A57F-5ABD9991F28F}</projecttypeguids>

The GUID’s are probably just my guids but the important stuff is that you’ll need to add the projecttypeguids for your project in order to make it a test project.

[UPDATED] Oh yeah - you’ll need to unload the projectfile and edit it manually in a texteditor. I wrote this in an hurry and missed...

I am back from a very different weekend indeed. I was given the opportunity to take part in a retreat organised by our corps (congregation). That meant that we were 15 people going away to far-off place and were silent for the main part of the weekend.

Yes - I understand that the ones who know me have a very hard time to see me being silent for such a long time, but it all went very well.

Also the power and restfulness in being silent was so great. There are so many experiences that will stay with me for a long, long time; like eating together with 15 people in total silence - very different, or walking together with two close friends, without saying anything - it made me feel powerful.

Finally - when you are left “alone” with such much time on your hands it was very interesting...